I’ve been speaking with a Wall Street Journal reporter who is working on an upcoming piece, and we could use your help. This is a different reporter than the person who interviewed me earlier about “small business credit card woes,” Jane Kim (but she sits in close proximity to Jane, so “Hi” Jane!).
Here’s a little background information. If you are familiar with this blog, then you already know that I am employed as an entrepreneurship professor at Western Carolina University. I’ve been researching the use of credit cards by small businesses, entrepreneurial bootstrapping (starting a business from scratch with little or no capital), and similar topics in connection with scholarly writing for a number of years. I am not a life-long academic, however (and “bootstrapping” is something I have done myself in the past, in the course of starting my own former businesses).
Remember the C.A.R.D. ACT? You know, the one with loopholes that are “big enough to drive an armored truck through“? The one that the credit card companies spent millions to lobby against (using as one source of funds, taxpayer’s own bailout money)? The one that applies to fixed rate consumer cards, but exempted “business credit cards” and variable rate cards (see the “loopholes” link cited above — credit card companies conveniently used the incredibly long waiting period before the C.A.R.D. Act kicked in to convert accounts to variable rates)?
Who does Congress think it’s fooling? The banking industry “influenced” Congress to write the C.A.R.D. Act in such a way as to create the image of a victory for consumers (thanks to its largess and “concern for the commoners”). Unfortunately, what our representatives really did was to draft and pass legislation with all the room the industry needed to wiggle out of giving consumers (and small businesses) the one thing they really needed: protection from a bunch of abusive bullies who to this day, have not changed their ways. It’s still all about the bonuses!
Now, focusing on the topic of small business and professional credit cards, the aforementioned Wall Street Journal reporter whom I was speaking today (Jessica Silver-Greenberg) asked me to try to help her find some living examples of individuals who have been “switched” (either knowingly or without really being informed as to what the switcheroo was all about) from a consumer card to a business or professional card. She subsequently emailed the following to me:
It was great to speak with you. If you could post the following on your website, that would be fantastic.
So, I am looking for any one who has received a solicitation for a small business or professional card in the past year. I am interested particularly in cardholders who have been approached by credit card companies, either by mail or by phone to switch into a professional/small business card from a personal credit card.
If you could post that on your blog, and tell anyone interested to email me at Jessica.silver-greenberg@wsj.com that would be wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Jessica
(Of course I will post it, Jessica — as long as credit card companies play “bait and switch,” I am delighted to do so.) Although Jessica has offered her email address directly, I would be happy to forward anything to her on behalf of ChangeInTerms.com readers (and, I’d actually like to hear from you myself, if you respond to the request; comments are welcome below this post as well).
Robert…welcome back! Glad you are still around. I have visited the site from time to time hoping that you would write.
Hope all is well with you….
Good to know that you are still there and you and the family are muddling through!
You know my feelings regarding government regulation. From my time on God’s green earth, I can’t say I remember an occasion where it wasn’t simply used by our representatives for corrupt purposes.
There are plenty of laws to protect us. They don’t enforce what they have already passed because there are no opportunities for personal or partisan causes.
Those opportunities are rooted exclusively in new legislation.
Fairly transparent…for as long as I have been focused on it.
I vote without exception for the guy who promises the least.
Hi Marv,
Yes, it’s me. I’m alive! Although I know that the evil-doers at credit card companies would probably rather have me go away, forever.
My wife is better, and I appreciate the concern you have expressed on a continual basis, following her major surgery last spring. The “Chase goons” have not done away with me. It’s a long story to catch-up. So I’ll create a short list of the highlights since my last post:
November 2009
We withdrew our real estate listing from the market because we knew we had to prepare for the fact that it might be years before the economy recovered. Thus, we needed to refinance and convert from a 5-year A.R.M. to a fixed rate mortgage. The story behind the A.R.M. and our reasons for it is also a long one. To summarize, the day we took it out we planned to sell the home in the third year. This may have been a seemingly bad plan from the perspective of the typical “I always pay cash” backseat drivers (as proof they would offer: “See, the economy went to hell-dummy!!!”). However, I wanted to put as little down as possible so as to focus on other “bad credit obligations.”
“What, you borrowed in addition to financing a house? That was also very foolish,” they would add. But, you and regular readers already know that I borrowed money for years, with the intention of going to graduate school so that I could become qualified to teach and help others. So, despite the “always pay cash” crowd’s holier-than-thou attitude or the fact that I would not have made it through school at all without borrowing, I had my own reasons. (I admit that while I think I did the right thing in the long run, the “education” I received has been both in my courses and through the long struggle to recover financially.) Anyway, there’s apparently a ninety day waiting period to refinance if a home has been on the MLS (I have no idea why).
Winter break (December – January 2009/2010)
We retrieved personal belongings that had been stored in three different storage units, in two states. The things in NC had been moved there in August 2008, to the condo we leased. We did that because we had already packed the vast majority of our personal property while our home was under a real estate sales contract that ended up falling through. (Lesson learned: I’m not planning to pack and/or move one stick of furniture or anything else until AFTER a closing unless there is a substantial liquidated damages deposit that I can keep; real estate agents, being the spineless scum that they are in not acknowledging the high risk of not closing given the realities of today’s economy, have nothing to lose–themselves, as the only people they care about–when they write up contracts such that possession and closing fall on the same day.)
January through mid-May, 2010
Continued my commute (300 miles each way) from TN to NC, and back again, each week. Little time for anything else besides monthly oil changes, teaching, and packing, unpacking, repacking (clothes, toiletries, “travel food,” emergency gear for wintry days crossing the mountains); you get the idea. It was a really productive semester in terms of teaching and some student projects, both graduate and undergraduate (I’ll comment further and post some additional links if I find time later).
Mid-May through late June
Finally managed to unpack the things from the storage units that we moved back to the house (but did not have time to put away during the winter break). I got my home office put back together! My books, files, research, books and papers in progress — all, back within my reach, and properly organized so that I could find what I needed.
June 27 to August 20, 2010
Teaching two online Master of Entrepreneurship degree program courses. Published one scholarly journal article, and one conference paper. Working on others (it’s true, “publish or perish” is the real deal. And if it’s not a scholarly journal, then it doesn’t really count; none of what I do on this blog, counts). This should explain why I have had to shift my attention to scholarly writing (and why I’m glad I finally have my home office up and running). I am, by the way, working on a scholarly article about the economic stresses on small businesses and their use of credit cards.
July 2010
Refinanced our house (what an experience that was — ridiculous process and steps, but done). You’re old enough to know, Marv (like me), that interest rates are going to go sky-high again at some point. Our national debt, so I am told by economists who are colleagues, is severe enough that we can be likened to a third world country by virtue of some ratios. I also predict civil strife, and other upheavals if we don’t get off this present course and elect some effective leadership.
Other remarks. I suppose to some extent I deserve some “I told you so’s” relative to Congress, the C.A.R.D. ACT, and other hopes I had relative to measures that might curtail the abuses of the credit card industry. On the other hand, it’s not like I have ever trusted Congress. Not since I read an extremely well researched historical book about the beginnings of the railroads in the United States. It was remarkable, and eye-opening, to read about the way approvals for expansion into new routes seemed to coincide with certain individuals buying up land and resources in advance. (How “convenient” that investments in timber and water rights were secured beforehand, since it took a whole lot of these resources to lay miles of new track and run the trains!)
Nevertheless, I admit that I did put faith in the notion that some action on the part of Congress was better than nothing. Sadly, the loopholes are so large and transparent that I was wrong in that regard. The exclusion of so-called small business and professional credit cards was particularly disheartening to me, given my line of work teaching entrepreneurship, and relative to the way I see things as a citizen in general: If we don’t protect and nurture small businesses, our economy is doomed.
More recently, with the passage of this Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) legislation, I was at least awakened enough to realize that whole process was highly suspect as a farce from the very beginning (I certainly don’t feel “protected,” yet). As you probably know (or recall from some of my posts), the Federal Reserve is not at all “Federal,” like the average citizen and ignorant members of the media seem to think it is. Rather, it is in effect “owned” by the major national banks–which happen to operate the credit card companies. Well, when it was announced that the CFPA would be associated with (and funded by! the FED), I knew that was tantamount to the “fox guarding the chickens.”
Meanwhile, although I have my hands full, my commitment to fighting credit card company abuses remains intact.
Dr Bob…is it really you? Thought the Chase goons had done away with you.
Glad that was/is not the case.
I hope the wife is better.
I knew you would come around to my way of thinking. This post does not exactly sound like the faith in legislation/representation you previously radiated has been gratified as you expected.
Enough of the I told you so’s.
At least Wells Fargo is getting whipped (Judicial)